


Absolutely Smitten

by esperink



Category: Be More Chill - Iconis/Tracz
Genre: Bittersweet Ending, Canon Compliant, During Canon, F/M, Hanahaki Disease, Light Angst, No Dialogue, Post-Canon, flower symbolism, mostly?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-16
Updated: 2018-06-16
Packaged: 2019-05-19 16:25:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14877273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/esperink/pseuds/esperink
Summary: Brooke was absolutely smitten with Jeremy Heere. If only he felt the same way for her.





	Absolutely Smitten

**Author's Note:**

> Whoops the title doesn’t have much to do with the fic, I just liked the title. I guess it could fit. 
> 
> Also I felt my girl Brooke wasn't getting enough attention so here.

Brooke had always thought Jeremy was cute, so when Chloe actually acknowledged and spoke to Jeremy in the mall, she had some hope. If Chloe spoke to him, that meant she could speak to him as well, right?

She thought the day he returned her affections would be the best day of her life. And, it was, until about two weeks before the Halloween party.

It started with a small cough. She thought nothing of it and simply bought a small bag of cough drops during lunch. The bag was finished within four days.

So she bought another.

But then she started to get headaches, when she coughed. It was getting more difficult to breathe after coughing. The cough drops soothed the soreness the coughing brought, but they didn’t get rid of the cough itself.

A week after the cough started, she started coughing flower petals up.

Flowers.

It was… impossible, she thought.

She’d heard about it, in pop fiction. How coughing up flowers meant that the person you loved didn’t love you back. How, instead, your love was one-sided. How your love was unreturned even if you were in a relationship with the person of your affections.

It hurt more than coughing up the flowers did.

She kept the flower petals in her pockets. She’d shove them in her pockets and when she got home she’d rinse them clean. She liked to decorate her room with them. She wanted to find something positive from her situation. They were pretty flower petals, after all. Some were fragile, shaped like rose petals, while others were smaller in colors like white or pink.

She continued to stay with Jeremy. She was trying to remain hopeful and patient.

A small part of Brooke knew returned affections wouldn’t happen. It was a small voice in the back of her head, telling her, ‘It’s not going to happen any time soon. He’s using you.’

For what, she didn’t know.

She did her best to ignore that small voice.

Nobody cared about her, she found.

She’d noticed that when she talked, Jeremy would only reply half-heartedly. Jake seemed more interested in listening to Chloe. Jenna sometimes talked to her, but Chloe would shut the other girl down. Chloe glared at her sometimes and often disregarded her feelings. She could really only talk to Rich during drama class and club, but he’d been acting strange lately.

Despite being the second most attractive girl in school, Brooke felt ultimately alone.

The flower petals continued. She wondered if they had any meaning beyond unreturned love. So she distracted herself with flower research.

She held the handful of petals, looking down at them and then back up at her computer screen. She did the best she could identifying them.

Gardenia. Secret love, purity, and sweetness.

White carnations. Innocence, pure love, faithfulness.

Daisy. Innocence and hope.

And she laughed bitterly, dropping those in the small trash can in her room, then looking at the last three petals.

White tulip. One-sided love.

Candytuft. Indifference.

Begonia. Beware.

She sighed softly, dropping the last three petals in the trash can as well.

Halloween night, she felt more sick than usual, but she still went to Jake’s party. She ignored the way her stomach churned and the way her breath caught in her throat as she waited for Jeremy. When he arrived, she bounded up to him, acting pleasantly, but her smile dropped when he brushed her off.

He needed a drink, she had told him, and she went off to find one, but instead ended up in the bathroom, coughing up more petals. She felt tears form in her eyes as she gathered the petals and went to drop them into the trash when she was startled by movement.

The bathtub curtain was pulled open and she and a familiar looking boy stared at each other. She recognized him. He was the headphones kid who used to always hang around Jeremy. She wondered what he was doing here, and suddenly wondered why she hadn’t seen the two together in weeks.

Her thoughts were cut off by more coughing, and she spit out petals into the pile she already had in her hands, then looked back up. The boy watched her with wide eyes, before she quickly dropped the petals into the trash can and swiftly fled the bathroom.

She grabbed two drinks, sipping on one herself as she went back to the spot Jeremy was, but he wasn’t there. She asked Jenna Rolan if she’d seen him, and she got the response that he was upstairs. She was up the stairs in an instant, not even stopping to thank the other girl.

And she stared in shock, when she stood at the door she had checked a few moments earlier, as the door opened and Jeremy stood there. In the room she could see Chloe. Then she noticed that Jeremy wasn’t wearing his shirt. She connected the dots. Her chest hurt.

Jeremy apologized, slipping past her, and Brooke watched him go. She looked back into the room. Chloe was propping herself up on her elbows, glaring at Brooke, challenging her. There was a glint of victory and malice in her eyes.

Brooke spent the rest of the night crying and coughing in her mother’s car. Instead of just petals now, whole flowers landed in her hands.

It was easier to pretend she accepted Chloe’s apology when Chloe called her the next day.

Yellow roses symbolized a broken heart.

She didn’t see Jeremy much after the Halloween party. He was avoiding her, she felt. She tried to act like it didn’t upset her.

When she got Squipped at the play, her SQUIP told her that after this event, they could neutralize the feelings she had. She wasn’t sure if she wanted that, but kept quiet. When she repeated the lines the SQUIP forced her to say, it was a lie. She was still upset, but it’s not like she’d willingly admit it.

She had to admit, though, that she was a little pleased when Chloe said that she didn’t sleep with Jeremy.

After the play, she had to pretend like she didn’t feel resentment or sadness or anything at all towards the new couple. She simply smiled at them, letting her smile drop whenever they left the vicinity.

Cyclamen. Resignation and goodbye.

She wondered what exactly that meant in her case. She was resigned to the fact that Jeremy had never loved her back. And she supposed she should bid her hope for their relationship goodbye. She almost didn’t want to. She had grown attached.

Rue. Regret, sorrow.

As time passed, the butterflies she felt when around Jeremy lessened, and the coughing decreased. And the some of the flowers and petals she coughed up were different.

Dandelion. Overcoming hardship.

Rosemary. Remembrance.

It was the beginning of the next semester when she woke up coughing but then she soon realized there were no petals spilling from her mouth. She furrowed a brow in confusion, pushing herself to sit up. It was a normal cough. A normal sore throat. Was she… actually just sick?

She very cautiously went about her day. No petals or flowers appeared.

She chanced a glance towards Jeremy and Christine. Her chest felt funny for the fear of feeling upset at the sight, but she wasn’t directly upset. She wasn’t sure how to feel about this development.

She was glad she could breathe a little easier.

But she wished that the day he returned her affections was genuine.

**Author's Note:**

> Take a shot every time I wrote ‘cough’ or ‘coughing’ like really. 
> 
> Come yell at me on tumblr: esperinkdraws


End file.
